Hey Fellow Floridians - Year 2

[Fiishergurl]

Barb,

I didnt end up ordering the eb's yet. If i order 6 will they stack them and pack them together or will it be 6 different boxes? I'm not home to recieve them so I'm trying to decide if i should have them shipped to my mom's.

Ginny

[ginger2778]

Originally Posted by Fiishergurl

Barb,

I didnt end up ordering the eb's yet. If i order 6 will they stack them and pack them together or will it be 6 different boxes? I'm not home to recieve them so I'm trying to decide if i should have them shipped to my mom's.

Ginny

Ginny, they stack them together and ship in 1 box. When you get them, they come with crystal clear instructions for every step of the set up. Including what to pot with, what to add and in what amounts, even a diagram of where to place the fertilizer strip, and the plants, spacing of plants, and how many of a given type, like broccolis or tomatoes. It isn't idiot proof, but it is idiot resistant!
Everything I do is following EB instructions.

[ginger2778]

Originally Posted by Barb_FL

Kay - I always heard the same thing in addition to too much nitrogen attracts aphids.

Last year seeing Ginny/Marsha's results I did buy Calcium Nitrate from Amazon but wasn't really faithful in using it. Result, it turned hard and then into liquid. Needs a perfect seal in Fl humidity.

Kay - do you have any tomatoes yet? Is the evening cool enough for fruit set?

----
Ginger - make sure you take and post pictures of your babies when they are in their new homes tomorrow. So many seedlings - did you have 100% or close germination?

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Ginny - thanks for the update on the trees - mine are HUGE.

Barb, I will take photos. I had about 92-95% germination. I have 16 boxes holding 24 of the 4" pots each. But several are unstable varieties, so it will be interesting to select for which plant on those. I'll let them grow for a few more weeks, then decide.
Going to be fun tomorrow. One girl is bringing Dunkin stuff, and I made my chicken salad, and enormous peanut butter chocolate chunk cookies. And fresh starfruit, strawberries, blueberries, and bananas with lunch.
One of my friends last year said, " I work for food"

[Zone9b]

Originally Posted by Fiishergurl

Thats two different plants... :-) one is beefsteak size tomatoes and the other is golf ball sized and had over 700 tomatoes... more really i just couldn't keep track of how many it produced throughout the whole season. It was an F2 seed from a grocery store F1. Super healthy and produced like crazy.

Ginny

Ginny
700 Tomatoes! That perks my interest. Did you save seeds again and now have F3 or F4 seeds? Any guess what they were or maybe it is best not to guess. What was taste like and best for cooking, canning, fresh eating? Number of days until first fruit?
Thanks, Larry

[Fiishergurl]

Originally Posted by Zone9b

700 Tomatoes! That perks my interest. Did you save seeds again and now have F3 or F4 seeds? Any guess what they were or maybe it is best not to guess. What was taste like and best for cooking, canning, fresh eating?
Larry

Hi Larry,

I saved tons of F3 seeds. I did grow out one F3 plant the fall after this plant grew but it was really wet fall season and i had a lot of other plants and just lost interest in it. The main thing this plant was good for was sharing tons of tomatoes with our neighbors who loved them. They were average on taste... The original tomato that the seed came from was a vine ripe hybrid from walmart that was sold on the vine and was a little smaller than a baseball.

I would be happy to send you some F3 seeds if you want to try it. Below are some more pictures but they just dont do it justice. It kep producing and producing. If you could see between all the leaves the tomatoes were really heavy in there and you can see all the one on the lower branches. It looked like a grape vine more than a tomato plant... lol.






Sorry, had some problems posting photos and deleted the sideways pictures.

Ginny

Originally Posted by Zone9b

700 Tomatoes! That perks my interest. Did you save seeds again and now have F3 or F4 seeds? Any guess what they were or maybe it is best not to guess. What was taste like and best for cooking, canning, fresh eating?
Larry

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[Zone9b]

Ginny,
Ya, I'd love to have a few seeds. I'll see if I can get it to produce anything before it gets too cold here and I will save most of the seeds for the spring and give it a better try. That is one impressive looking tomato plant. I don't think I ever saw a tomato vine with so many tomatoes on it. I am almost finished getting my tomato transplants into the compost. Should finish tomorrow.
Thanks so much.
Larry

[Imthechuck]

I believe the new eb instructions say 1lb of dolomite. I drop a tsp of calcium nitrate down the tube every Sunday morning

Im debating what fungicide/pesticide approach.....


Daconil and then Daconil + Spinsosad mixed the next week < Spinosad can be only used 6x

or Marshas

1/2 Liquid copper + bt every 7 days < caterpillars wouldn't stand a chance


too bad bt cannot be mixed with daconil at least from my research

Caterpillars cause serious damage.....

[Fiishergurl]

My vote is go with Marshas!

Ginny

Originally Posted by Imthechuck

I believe the new eb instructions say 1lb of dolomite. I drop a tsp of calcium nitrate down the tube every Sunday morning

Im debating what fungicide/pesticide approach.....


Daconil and then Daconil + Spinsosad mixed the next week < Spinosad can be only used 6x

or Marshas

1/2 Liquid copper + bt every 7 days < caterpillars wouldn't stand a chance


too bad bt cannot be mixed with daconil at least from my research

Caterpillars cause serious damage.....

[Fiishergurl]

Originally Posted by Zone9b

Ginny,
Ya, I'd love to have a few seeds. I'll see if I can get it to produce anything before it gets too cold here and I will save most of the seeds for the spring and give it a better try. That is one impressive looking tomato plant. I don't think I ever so a tomato vine with so many tomatoes on it. I am almost finished getting my tomato transplants into the compost. Should finish tomorrow.
Thanks so much.
Larry

Ok i will send some to you. A few things to know about it....

Since it is seed from a comercially bred tomato, it has a long wait from the time the tomatoes get to full green size until they blush. Long hang time i guess it's called. They dont mature in 55-60 days like a lot of tomatoes that size. I did not specifically record the dates but i would say it was more like 80 days. I can check based on my picture history (i took pics at every stage and have dates of the files) and let you know.

Also my friend grew the same F2 plants in the ground and he doesn't fertilize, water, etc like I do and he got a lot of tomatoes but no where near what i got. So I do think environment had a little to do with it. I fertilized with tomato tone side dressed about once every two to three weeks and also supplemented with texas tomato food in the small water reservoir when the plant was monster size. Because this plant was in a walmart pot with about a 1 gallon reservoir, we watered it between 2-4 times a day at the end... lol. It even fell over twice in high winds and we just propped it back up, tied some branches up and it kept going. We are on the intracoastal waterway and some of those spring and summer storms bring some really strong gusts.

But my point is for the most part we babied it and gave it all the water and food it needed and pruned extra lower leaves to encourage it to keep all those blossoms it was generating and turn them into tomatoes. It had long beautiful trusses with 12 or more tomatoes on them.

Also I read somewhere but dont know if its true that the generations after F2 might not be as vigorous as the F1 and F2.

Anyways, not trying to discourage you from growing it... just filling in some details... :-)

I loved this plant. Everyone that saw it in person was amazed by it.

Ginny

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[kayrobbins]

I finally have my first tomato on the fall plants. Sugar Drop is the first one to produce and it has two tiny tomatoes. The plants are all looking good in spite of all the rain we are having. I have found a couple of army worms on the plants. It is so hard to spray when there is so much rain so I am checking the leaves daily to get rid of any I see.

[Fiishergurl]

Originally Posted by kayrobbins

I finally have my first tomato on the fall plants. Sugar Drop is the first one to produce and it has two tiny tomatoes. The plants are all looking good in spite of all the rain we are having. I have found a couple of army worms on the plants. It is so hard to spray when there is so much rain so I am checking the leaves daily to get rid of any I see.

Oh thats so exciting!! When did you start your fall seeds?

Ginny

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[ginger2778]

Congrats, Kay, I am about 6 weeks behind you. I got some Orange Russian 117 seeds in the mail yesterday, and sowed 6 of them approx 5 minutes later.
I googled it, it is spectacularly gorgeous, and on Nicky's blog she said it had an incredible flavor and a lot of productin. If all goes well, I'll have lots of seeds available.

[kayrobbins]

I started my seeds on July 13th. I hope more plants start setting soon. I worry about getting a cold snap early like last year. Is the Orange Russian the bicolor heart?

[ginger2778]

Originally Posted by kayrobbins

I started my seeds on July 13th. I hope more plants start setting soon. I worry about getting a cold snap early like last year. Is the Orange Russian the bicolor heart?

Yes, this photo is taking from Nicky's blog. Thank you Nicky.

[ginger2778]

Sorry about the mess, but here is a photo of yesterday's transplants. They will stay on the patio in intensive care through at least tomorrow. A stalled cold front over Tampa is causing severe storms. Tomorrow I will move them into shade to start getting hardened off, but take them in by about 1, unless the forecast changes. Still too young and tender for a torrential downpour. It's a delicate balancing act because they need more light than the patio can provide.
I also have to put some yellow sticky traps out, whiteflies can get right through the screen.
Aaaannnndddd..... Ella dog smells the fish in the fertilizer, so she was sniffing around ALot! This year, with her, is going to be interesting.